Deciphering Enterprise Apps

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Check in here regularly as senior writer Todd R. Weiss tells the fascinating, empowering, frustrating and creative tales of CIOs and other IT pros who are deploying and battling ERP, CRM, BI and other apps inside their companies.

I know it's not just me feeling this: Today, there are too many vendors announcing "innovative solutions" that are, at best, incremental improvements to existing products or, at worst, new products in search of actual business...

Throw Under the Bus: 1. One is thrown under the bus when he is made the scapegoat or blamed for something that wasn't his responsibility in the first place. 2. A cover-up for your mistake. -Urban Dictionary

After Oracle sued SAP and its former division TomorrowNow for IP theft and won a ruling for $1.3 billion in damages, you might have noticed a wave of speculation and interest in SAP's financial future.

While listening to Pandora Radio the other day, I had a minor epiphany. For those who don't know, Pandora is a 10-year-old Internet radio service that allows its users to create their own "radio stations" based on their individual...

The Oracle v. SAP trial commenced this week. After more than three years of legal wrangling and public pronouncements, and way too many briefs, motions and hearings, the case now sits before a judge and jury in Northern California.

If you live pretty much anywhere in the United States, you're sick of the political "attack ads" so commonplace during these mid-term elections: You know, the relentless, truth-bending "Swift Boating" of Republican and Democratic...

Back in January, I had the pleasure of interviewing "Big ERP," the cartoonish representation of enterprise ERP vendors and their gluttonous views on big, expensive software implementations and fat support contracts that milk their...

What started with Oracle's March 2007 lawsuit against SAP (and TomorrowNow) is about to finally come to a Northern California courtroom: The trial that never seemed like it actually would go to trial is set to commence on Nov.

I'm currently reading John M. Barry's The Great Influenza, a masterpiece of a book that chronicles "history's most lethal influenza virus." Beginning in 1918 in the United States, the plague killed as many as 100 million people across...

Growing up, my best friend Johnny G. would often get really "hopped up" after eating too many M&Ms. His actions became nearly irrational, and he could barely function enough to play a decent game of Donkey Kong on ColecoVision.

East Coast CIOs vs. West Coast CIOs: While the rivalry doesn't have the intrigue of hip-hop's East Coast-West Coast feud in the 1990s, nor as colorful characters (2Pac, West; and The Notorious B.I.G., East) or warring businesses...

Warning: The post that follows involves the subjects of religion and enterprise software. If you adhere to a dogma on either topic and are offended by heretical observations concerning the two, please don't read on.

Go to any tech conference, and you're sure to get your fill of vendor marketing rhetoric—the constant sharing of synergy-this and platform-that which can fill up a "Buzzword Bingo" card very quickly. Here are 10 of the most popular...